Don't Go Shopping for Hair Care Products Without Me : Over 2,000 Brand Name Products Reviewed Plus the Latest Hair Care Information

by Paula Begoun

Yes Paula's book has lots of good information and yes, she must have spent untold hours evaluating hair care products. However, quite frankly, Paula's book left me with a lot of unanswered questions. For example, Paula says on page 45 "that you will discover that hair-care products sold by hair salons are not intrinsically better, more sophisticated, more appropriate, or superior to drugstore lines. In many cases the opposite is true, or, at the very least, there is no real difference between the expensive versus the inexpensive."

Here is where Paula and I part company on ideas about hair care products. After 10 years devoted to the best products I could find, I totally disagree that drugstore lines are even in the same ballpark with the salon products. I have tried all the big salon names like George Michael, Aveda, Bain de Terre, Matrix, Sorbie, Phyto and Kiehl. I have also tried many of the drugstore lines such as Finesse, Vidal Sassoon, Flex, St. Ives and Herbal Essence.

I let the results speak for themselves. I have thick, shiny, vibrantly healthy hair below my waist. I attribute my hair to using Aveda almost exclusively for the past

8 years. I have alternated with some of my other favorites like Bain de Terre. Recently I have been doing my own product comparisons with Phyto, Kiehl, Origins and some European brands. Some are the same as Aveda, some better in some ways, and some worse. I have never managed to totally abandon Aveda for any other product because of what it does for my hair.

Yes, this book has great information if you are interested in evaluating all the different drugstore lines. Paula also evaluates Aveda and some of the better lines (in my opinion) but she also leaves out some of the lines that I think are great like Bain de Terre and Kiehl. She also excludes George Michael which is another favorite of long haired beauties.

I guess the bottom line about this book is to make your own decisions and try the products that either appeal to you or your professional stylist suggests. Everyone will experience the hair care products differently depending on their hair.

Paula does provide some very helpful information in Chapter 4 on hair coloring. She also has some good chapters for women of color, to curl or not and what you are really buying from the viewpoint of what's really in the stuff that you buy. Paula does a good job of explaining all about ingredients and hair care labels.

Overall I would recommend this book although I would advise you to keep your own personal needs in mind when you buy products that she has reviewed. I will also be reviewing Paula's' book about cosmetics.

Stay tuned.

Buy The Book

Paperback: 407 pages
Publisher: Beginning Pr (June 1, 1995)
ISBN: 1877988154